The Havana Room

Two

From the outside, you saw only the gold script and the heavy doornothing that suggested how big the place really was, nor what went on inside, and with whom. You stepped down to the main floor, a vault of mahogany hung with nineteenth-century oils (railroads, western expansion, warships under sail), and there you submitted to the aroma of steak. The maitre d' greeted every arrival from his station, and once you penetrated his skepticism, two blond assistants conveyed you to a table. One could order oysters Rockefeller or Scottish smoked salmon as an appetizer, but these were merely prelude to the fifteen-ounce filet mignon au poivre, the incomparable New York sirloin, or, say, the sixteen-ounce Kobe. Real gut-droppers and heart-stoppers. The cost? Too much, of course, and washed down with liquor marked up five times from wholesale. But no one cared. Each day the place moved four hundred lunches, mostly to office dwellers along Sixth Avenue and Broadway, as well as to a smattering of midwestern and Japanese tourists who believed, incorrectly, that the restaurant represented no more than a quaint exercise in nostalgia and American history. After the lunch rush, however, in the lingering long afternoons and swelling nights, the joint filled with its real customers- space-peddlers and debt-dealers, sex-biters and lie-eatersthe very people, in other words, who've always made New York City so grand.

As soon as I stumbled inside on that rainy winter day, I was seized by the dark, agreeable gravity of the place- the chair-rubbed wainscoting, the ceiling smudged by lamp smoke. Nothing was dingy but all was broken in, softened by the centuries. Within a few minutes I'd sipped a shot of whiskey, which eased the pain in my jaw, and had tasted a bowl of steaming chowder- my first real pleasure, I realized, in quite some time. On the wall next to me hung a map of Manhattan that showed the coastal contours of the island before they were filled in, the inlets and streams and swamps now gone. Next to it hung a framed newspaper account of the great fire of 1835 that specified the tragedy's death count, as well as the lost value of incinerated shops, saddle manufacturers, and apothecaries. Dry rot crept over the yellowed paper into the columns, turning the crisp, type-struck letters into blank, unreadable clouds. Even great catastrophe, it seemed, would be forgotten in time. And this was a comfort. No one knew me here, I realized, no one suspected me of failure or accidental murder, no one begrudged me my soup, my heavy spoon.

I came back that same night, wearing a fresh shirt, and the next day, and the day after that, ten of the next ten nights. I ate, I drank, I chatted with whomever. Screw the cost. Why had no one told me of the place? Where had I been? In those first few weeks I spied newborn movie stars and living-dead politicians, rappers in ghetto-fab white furs, the nation's most prominent feminist theorist (a heavy napkin tucked into her shirt as she chewed her meat savagely), the mayor and his bickering entourage, the city's most famous call girl (a Russian woman, she dined alone, with reading glasses and a book), and members of all New York's professional teams. Presidents and prizefighters had also eaten there, long ago, but no one really cared, because new action was available every night, pounding heavily, cigar in hand, up the stairs that led to the Churchill and Roosevelt Rooms (reserved for private parties six months in advance, piano for hire, strippers allowed), or sitting too mysteriously at the junior bar, smoking with impunity and waiting- perhaps for you. They came exactly because the place was not new, not suddenly famous for its piquant sauces or artful arrangement of vegetables; no, the terms of the transaction had nothing to do with recent discovery, but rather with what was long proven: that you and I and all of us were doomed. The paintings and lithographs on the walls featured only the far departed, and to eat beneath their unchanging gaze was thus to understand- no matter how lovely her smile, no matter how handsome his wallet- that it did not matter if you polluted your lungs or liver or gut with the good stuff being served, because a man or a woman's life was itself just a short meal at the table, so to speak, and one had an obligation to live well and live now, to dine heartily by the logic of the flesh.

Each night the tables filled by six-thirty, and soon I noticed the clientele mostly comprised men eating on business, seven out of ten, anyway. The women could be divided into two groups: the younger ones making their first or second or eighth time around, walking stiffly and with only half-hidden anticipation, and the not-so-younger ones, who by the very fact of their presence had stopped counting just about everything, including tonight's drinks. The men came in more ages and gradations, or so it seemed to me, perhaps because there were many more of them, or because I studied their variety in search of my old self- that optimistic fellow, that happy minivan- as well as versions of my former future self, the Bill Wyeth I would now never be: fifty, settled into the law firm, drinking coffee with Judith each morning, perhaps taking a second or even third child to school, richer every year, each August spent in the shingled house on Nantucket. And those former selves, future and past, were there- by the dozen in truth, sweating through their oxford cloth shirts after the second drink, fiddling with their handheld devices and cell phones, young enough to fear their hairlines more than their hearts, old enough to have seen pals get knocked off the high end of the seesaw. Always drilling for the hidden streams of cash running through the city. Sexed up with ambition, but worried that their penises, like a volatile tech stock, might be subject to sudden performance downgrades. I heard a lot of jokes and saw plenty of smiles, but mostly the talk was reducible to money, the laughter mortgaged, the ambition presold. These were men who were prosperous and in demand, loved by women and children, men who possessed life insurance and clean underwear. Mostly Republicans except when they agreed with the Democrats. Knowledgeable about the interest rate cycle. Oil changes every three thousand miles. Retirement plan well funded. Irony well funded. Safe- just as I had been.

The manager of the restaurant, a tall dark-haired woman in glasses named Allison Sparks, tolerated me at first because I was a minor yet constant revenue stream, always willing to sit at Table 17, the worst one in the place, a two-seater against the far wall, almost touching the clanking plate-warmer. Within the smoky stage of the steakhouse, Table 17 lay in the deepest shadows, and if the patron sitting there added nothing to the frisson of the atmosphere, he couldn't detract from it, either. Allison Sparks, who I estimated to be about thirty-five, had managed the place for a long time, and knew all its slow zones and dead spots. I liked her and I watched her from afar, and I confess that she was another reason I returned each day, usually in a suit and tie. Yes, I might as well confess from the start that had I not found Allison's manner so alluring- her rustling, long-legged efficiency as she went by, her perfumed busyness- things would have been very different- for me, and for others, in some ways worse, perhaps, and in many ways better.

How and why a woman is beautiful keeps changing as I get older, for I tend to notice aspects of women that I didn't as a younger man, and in my twenties, say, I wouldn't have described Allison as beautiful. But she was. Not in her separate parts, perhaps, but in the whole of her. What I felt most was her confidence, her relentlessness, her drive to have things her way and no other. She seemed full of humor and fury and sexual need. She arranged people, fixed problems, came to decisions. She checked her watch and kept her back straight and made sure no lipstick was smeared on her teeth. The steakhouse had hundreds of regular patrons who returned at varying intervals, and she knew all of them, often remembering their favorite drink and how they liked their steak done; the place was her stage, and she, not the chef, its true star. Dressed in a conservative blue suit and often carrying a clipboard affixed with wholesalers' wine lists or vendors' bills, she ran the place with absolute authority over everyone, including the owner, a sunken, liver-faced man in his eighties named Lipper who came around once a week in a wheelchair, shook hands indiscriminately with the staff, fondled a waitress or two, drank a glass of Merlot, and was wheeled away by his nurse. He trusted Allison to wring every last cent of profit out of the joint, and she did.

She also welcomed me because I was agreeable with the staff, tipping always and well. When a new waitress or busboy was hired, Allison pointed out the diner at Table 17, explaining that I was a regular, a regular regular, often eating lunch and dinner there over six hours, and missing only one or two meals a week, not including the Monday lunch, when the restaurant was closed for cleaning after the weekend. My pile of newspapers and obscure volumes were to be tolerated, they were told, and within a few months my presence at Table 17 became one of the invisible verities of the place. Even when I was not there, I filled the space with my absence. Waitresses and busboys came and went, were hired and fired, but always I was present at Table 17 for lunch and often dinner, appearing to anyone glancing in my direction for the first time as a reasonably prosperous lawyer or businessman, not someone with little better to do. Indeed, I knew how odd it was that I ate there so often, and from time to time I forced myself to miss a meal, if only to appear not to be utterly rooted to the place.

But I was, and beyond my uncomfortable interest in Allison and my enjoyment of the surroundings, I wonder what pressure kept returning me through the heavy front door. Nothing that I later found, nothing that would both make and undo me, was yet perceptible. So I am describing, I suppose, my progress into the heart of things- the incremental movement from newcomer to insider, from observer to actor. In the beginning, however, all I did was sit at Table 17 and make affable chitchat as necessary, watch Allison march past, swinging her clipboard. I found that after a drink or two I was able to forget how much I missed my son and wife- a mercy. I didn't intend to get to know anyone or become involved. I just wanted to be around people. Each day, sitting at my very own Table 17, I'd start with a Coke-no-ice and the soup du jour. There were times when the restaurant quieted and for an hour in the late afternoon I was the only patron. But so regular was my appearance that I disappeared, forgotten while the waitresses sat down and gossiped and the busboys changed the tablecloths. I found these moments peaceful. I had achieved privacy but I wasn't alone. With the merest indication of my eye someone would hurry over to inquire what I wanted, but otherwise I was left alone. Did I make use of this time? Did I read the history of civilization or compose a symphony? No, no, and all no. Yet I was content, in a miserable way; I was not whole, but a collection of fragments, waiting, you could say, for the unexpectable, for something to happen.

Sunk in the shadows, then, I watched, and there was a lot to see. The secret flirtations of the waitresses- with the clientele, the waiters, and each other. I saw a man wolfing down his dinner jump as if struck in the back by a spear, then topple, already dying, facedown onto his plate; I watched a saucy little woman lean forward and slip the watch from the wrist of her date, a drunken fellow whose tongue hung out in anticipation; I heard any number of men being fired over lunch, and when the actual phrase arrived into the conversation ("need to go in a new direction" was popular, as it suggested noble quest and brilliant navigation) the man being let go cut his eyes away or slumped in dejection, and always I felt sick for him. One night I noticed a woman of fifty quietly scissor a man's shirt to ribbons; I saw the denture-worriers and potato-droppers, the bone-gaggers and spoon-inspectors, the toothpick-suckers and pill-arrangers. I saw a rat-sized dog leap out of a woman's purse and lick her fried calamari, I saw a man dab a napkin in his gin and tonic to clean off his hearing aid. And passing around and through them all were the food runners, short squat men, most of them Mexican, who didn't talk or smile, just toted tray after heavy tray to the tables with faces of stoic resignation, like laborers in a mine digging gold they didn't get to keep.

And there was this: If you sat there night upon night, as I did, you noticed that on particular evenings- perhaps once a week- Allison Sparks made a subtle pass through the dining room, stopping for a few words with certain of her regular male patrons. Very few words, to be sure, followed by a nearly imperceptible nod or knowing gleam in her eye. Each fellow appeared pleased to have been selected. At most Allison would speak with fifteen men in one evening, spacing out her contacts over an hour or more so that it'd be difficult to notice a pattern. Unless, like me, you dined alone and made a point of watching for it. I confess my jealousy when Allison bent to whisper in the men's ears, her red lips close to their cheeks, her dark eyes glancing up to check the room and then back into theirs, as if she'd never looked away, crinkling her warmth, privately sealing the deal, whatever it was.

These same patrons tended to linger at their tables as midnight drew near, long past signing the credit card receipt, and after a furtive glance at their watches, perhaps followed by a last swallow of dessert wine, they stood up and eased almost secretively over the creaking boards toward a small, unmarked door to the extreme left of the foyer, quite mistakable as leading to a coatrack or service closet, and kept closed. Affixed to the door was a tiny brass plate, and on particular nights a yellowed card appeared in this plate; on the card was typed a modest instruction: PLEASE KEEP DOOR CLOSED. When the card appeared, the room was found to be unlocked, and the men entered, pulling the door shut behind them. Table 17, so far to one side of the dining room, afforded me a direct if distant vantage on this quiet transit, and on the infrequent nights when the door opened, I saw that no unusual noise or light escaped. The patrons appeared to step down and to the left, and whatever brightness reached their faces came from below, finding only the undersides of their jaws and noses while so darkening their eye sockets that it was as if each man had just pulled on a mask of his own face. Naturally I wondered what went on down there. Were the persons entering any different from the others who stayed in the main dining room or at the bar? Not at first glance. Not necessarily.

But over time I could say with reasonable certainty that the men passing toward the doorway were undeniably prosperous, as I myself had once been, and in particular understood themselves to be still on the upside of the evening. Despite ample food and drink, there was more to learn or wager or steal. During my now wrecked law career, I'd spent quite a bit of time with such men. Their eyes seemed dilated with the conviction that Manhattan was an existentially transactional machineone person's fate went in and another's came out. Well dressed, rocking on their heels perhaps, tapping a finger against a pant leg, they were eager, these men, they possessed unspent energies and wanted something new, something more. Something dangerous, perhaps. And it was not about sex, not directly, or not primarily. The city was full of call girls and strippers and escorts and bar-stalkers, there for the buying and the flying, and anyway, many of the men passing through the doorway kissed their wives or girlfriends goodbye at the foyer, promising to be home in a few hours. But I could not be completely certain of their fidelity, for several times I saw a lovely, unattended black woman carrying a blue suitcase enter the restaurant and proceed directly to this same wooden door, as if acting on previous instructions, and after Allison nodded wordlessly at the maitre d', she was always let in.

"What's down there?" I asked a waitress one night when the card appeared on the door.

"The Havana Room?" she said. "It's sort of a special arrangement."

"You mean by reservation?"

"Not exactly. Almost, kind of."

This made no sense to me. Perhaps she didn't actually know. "What do they do in this room?"

She shrugged. "I've heard some things, but I don't believe them."

"Have you ever gone down there?"

"No."

"No?"

"Only a few members of the staff are allowed. Ha, mostly."

"Ha?"

"He's the old Chinese guy? You've seen him. Bald? The handyman?"

Yes, I had seen him, I realized, slender and stooped with a big Adam's apple and bloodshot eyes, somewhere between sixty and eighty years old. Usually he went by holding a wrench or a piece of tubing. But still I didn't understand. "Is there any reason I can't go into this Havana Room?"

The waitress looked around to see if anyone was watching. "It's sort of restricted," she said quietly.

"So I can't just stand up right now and walk in?"

"They'd ask you to leave."

"Why?"

"Because it's totally private." She looked at me, perhaps with pity, then lowered her voice further. "You're supposed to, like, know somebody."

I nodded. Of course. After all, I didn't know anyone. I had no business, I had no connections, I lacked even a decent operative liethe one we all need.

Was it inevitable that Allison Sparks and I would fall into conversation? No. Or yes, definitely. She felt me looking at her as she passed back and forth through the restaurant, I'm sure, just as I felt her awareness of my arrival each day, her sidelong contemplation of my books, my solitude. We didn't smile at each other; rather we nodded, as if in silent agreement that although the interest was mutual, the moment was not yet ripe. Of course, I tried to hide my attraction to her, for I had no reason to hope that she felt any toward me. Yet I noticed that she made sure I received very good service at Table 17, and I made a point of never sitting anywhere else. People have such ways of communicating, of course. It was simply a matter of who would speak first, and when.

In the meantime I quietly studied Allison Sparks, and, having encountered many people in my work, imagined that I knew something about her. New York has many avenues to success, but there's a particular kind of young woman who sails upward through businesses (ad agencies, weekly magazines, real estate offices, big restaurants) that are naturally frenzied and unstable. Because she is well organized, industrious, and initially modest, such a young woman reassures those around her; other women feel she is attractive because of her personality, and older men- older than fifty-five, say- see in her a respectful and attentive daughter. So she prospers- at first. And she dates, although often the men are too weak for her and she discards them. Within a year or two her title changes and she has more responsibility, only to find that the parameters of her job now include conflict and neurotic personalities. For a while she tries to deal with these challenges with kindness and tact, yet finds that these strategies often don't work. By now she has identified superiors whom she considers allies and those she does not. She becomes more interested in the end, as opposed to the sweet-voiced means. Is she ready to admit this to herself? Not quite. Meanwhile she becomes adept at all the forms of workplace intimacy, with older men, younger women, people on the phone, and so on. She learns to use her voice, to be playful, teasing, affectionate. She can manufacture energy or humor as necessary, as well as disinterest or rank fury. These qualities of manipulation begin to help her score important successes. She makes money for the operation, she solves problems. The younger women in the business look up to her, but the men of the same age have started to realize that they must compete with her. Her natural ability is intimidating, especially as it seems she is often one step ahead of them in anticipating some small, essential detail. About twenty-nine now, she is at a crucial developmental moment; she is about to plateau or become extremely successful. If she has been working very long hours, the years of toil and loneliness have started to harden her. Men have come and gone; there'll always be another, she thinks. Like a good movie- sooner or later. A year goes by. She senses that the younger women could fear her. Another year passes. She has learned to negotiate aggressively for her raises. She begins to change the stores where she shops and to spend money on luxuries and services that make her feel better, that soften her private suffering. She starts to travel alone, not minding that she will appear available- because she is. The spectrum of men with whom she spends time lengthens on one end. She will see older men, in part because they are more patient listeners, but even more so because they have secrets of survival, invisible techniques of power that she wants to master. Is she ready to admit this to herself? Of course not. But she is no longer ashamed to say she is interested in men for their position, their connection to the greater ganglia of wealth and influence and information. The available males now fall into three rough categories for her: handsome boys who are poor, often less intelligent, and surely self involved; barracuda-men in their early forties, usually divorced, who might already be lying about their ages by a year or two; and, lastly, the moguls, small and large, who are now rich enough to die. They are ever more grateful for basic things: untroubled digestion, hair in most of the expectable places. They know they have only ten or twelve good years left. Our woman, nearing thirty-five, sees that the few remaining husband-types are having a rather good time with women ten years her junior. She tells herself she doesn't hate them. She tells herself she needs no one.

This was Allison, so far as I yet understood. And then one day, after I was done with my lunch, she simply walked over to me with a cup of coffee, her footsteps brisk and without hesitation, and said, "So, Mr. Wyeth, you would appear to have a lot of time on your hands."

I checked her dark eyes. "That's true."

"You strike one as unencumbered."

"Unencumbered, yes. Unburdened, no."

"Well, you do seem to like it here," she said after a moment's consideration. She bent close to me and poured sugar and milk into my coffee without being asked. "Assuming you don't mind," she added as she gave the coffee a stir with the spoon.

"Not at all. Perfect. Thanks."

"Well-" She stopped stirring. "I know how you like it."

"You do?"

"Yes, Mr. Wyeth. I notice things."

"You can call me Bill."

"So, where were we?" She tilted her head. "Oh, right, 'Unencumbered, yes. Unburdened, no.' "

"Yes," I said. "But that's no secret."

She blinked, perhaps purposefully. "And what is?"

That stopped me. "You probably know better than I do."

She shifted her weight, one hip to the next. "I just wondered why you come here each day." There it was- the point of insertion into the other's life. Once that happens, you can't go back. "Of course, we're glad to see you," she added.

"I hope I'm not your only conspicuous patron."

"Oh, please," Allison sighed. "You should see how many different crazy people come in here."

I made some small noise of concurrence, noting at the same time Allison's nervous red fingernail digging against the wool of her trousers.

"There's one kind of person we need more of, though."

"What's that?"

"Flirters."

"Flirters?"

She looked at me deadpan. "Even though you would think."

"What would I think?"

"You would just think that in New York City there would be more people who could actually flirt." Allison cocked her head, mouth open, daring me for a response.

"Terrible," I agreed.

"Worse. It's unbearable!" she answered. "One feels so abandoned."

I could only smile down into my plate.

"You still haven't answered my implicit question."

I lifted my eyes. "Which was?"

"We know you are unencumbered, but we don't know if you are a flirter."

"True," I said, "but we do know the exact opposite of that."

Allison appeared pleasantly confused. "The opposite-?"

"We know," I began, keeping her eye now, "that you are a flirter, but we don't know if you are unencumbered."

"Well, yes," Allison said, catching up, shrugging away my cleverness, "but that's as it should be."

"Oh?"

"But thank you, anyway."

"For-?"

She bent over the table close. "It was very nice wordplay."

"It was all right," I agreed.

"Are you usually so good at- wordplay?"

I just stared into her eyes. "All right, I give up," I said.

"Oh, don't. Not yet, Mr. Wyeth."

I offered her my hand. "As I said before, I'm Bill."

"Very pleased," Allison said, shaking it lightly, her hand cool and small and experienced, "by the chance encounter."

And with that, Allison excused herself and whirled away to deal with a presumptive crisis in the kitchen. It had been, I reflected happily, a silly little chat, a witty suggestion of what might follow. Oh, I liked her. She liked me, we both knew it, but who knew what it meant? Maybe it was friendship, maybe it was benign, maybe it was prelude to great pounding sex. Maybe it was a lot of things. The city offers you possibilities. Whether you accept them is another matter.

So we began to talk, or mostly Allison did, telling me each day in a low, amused voice as she marched by that "the straight busboys are fighting the gay waiters," or "I have to go fire my druggie waitress," or "a woman vomited in the ladies' room and won't come out." Occasionally she pointed out the celebrities who'd arrived that night, or the woman with two limos waiting outside, one for her, the other for her dogs, or the man who could eat three steaks. It was a huge show, and she was running it. Dozens of employees, hundreds of patrons, money flowing everywhere. But although each night at the restaurant constituted a unique surge of calamity and exhaustion, the place was notable for what was constant, too, and I could see that Allison pondered its larger theatricality. As in any human drama, foolishness announced itself to the room, probity slept peacefully at night, weakness beckoned to strength, and lust bought drinks for loneliness. Night after night, Allison, perched near the maitre d' stand, say, or turning the corner to the carpeted stairs leading to the party rooms, would notice one woman or another, or in groups of two or three, arrive late at the bar with only one intention- to find a man. Some would be successful, while a few looked like they might end up in a trombone case by the morning. Many nights Allison tilted her head toward one man or woman or couple like a handicapper at the racetrack, and whispered to me, "Watch this one, Bill. Give him about an hour, I'm telling you." Her suspicion rarely went unrewarded. The waiters had to separate men and women who fell upon each other in the rooms upstairs, or they asked a woman to rebutton her blouse, or they lifted a drinker to his feet after he had somehow fallen to the floor.

Allison would have to attend to these little disasters, and as I became witness to her work, saw what she did all day, this put us in a kind of intimate proximity. She felt known by me, and I began to understand that despite dealing with dozens of people, and behind those efficient-looking eyeglasses, she herself was lonely. She lived, she confessed, in an opulent apartment, her living room windows opening north on Eighty-sixth Street, directly at another apartment house, but from her westerly dining room she could look down on the rolling meadows of Central Park. The place had been left to her by her long-widowed father, a banking executive, and she'd moved in after he died with a sense of foreboding, because who really wanted to live in the huge apartment of one's deceased father? "Especially the wallpaper, and the smells and everything," she told me. " So depressing." But in time she'd come to love the spaciousness of the place, as well as the attentions of her father's old neighbors, many of whom took a parental interest in her. The rooms were comfortable, and in Manhattan the body craves comfort against the hard edges of curbs and cars and faces, and Allison was no exception.

Within a few weeks we were talking daily, usually after the lunch rush. She'd sit down and tell me about one or the other men in her life, and in general they were confident, intellectual types, witty and accomplished in all the right places, yet somehow insufficient. Something about them was minor, she confessed to menever their achievements or romantic attentions or wallets- but something else, something hard for her to describe. Finally, of course, we are all minor, every one of us, but there was something in Allison that discovered this in men. If I hadn't liked her so much, I might have said she was peevish, a bit particular, streaked with a dark skepticism, even. Either she was overpowering the men or undermatching herself, I thought. But I saw a few of her dates when they met her at the restaurant and they seemed decent enough guys, even to me. In time I wondered if I saw a pattern in which Allison met a respectable man, let herself be taken to dinner or the theater, then quickly slept with him- once. Only once. As if by design. Soon she was on to the next one. What did this mean? "It would appear you're not a husband-hunter," I said.

"Nope." Allison shrugged. "I don't think I'd be very good at marriage. I mean, I did try it once." She'd had a short, disastrous union in her early twenties, she confessed. "I'd like to have a baby, though, if I found the right man. Or maybe I could adopt… there are all these beautiful Chinese babies with no mothers." And there she left it, her face a little sad, wary of even thinking about the idea. Truth to be told, Allison knew time was running against her. She'd taken good care of herself, as the phrase goes, but she was one of those women whose face brightly masks a deeper disappointment. She had not been satisfied yet. Her body did not seem girlish so much as unused, especially by maternity. Motherhood consumes the bodies of women, if not from pregnancy and nursing itself, then by the years of too little sleep. The mothers I've known don't seem to mind this, for in trading away themselves they have been rewarded with children.

Allison's problem, of course, was the restaurant. Running it was an enormous, addictive job, requiring very long days. The customers, the waitstaff, the cooks, the suppliers- each population was distinct in its demands. Allison arrived at 8 a.m. and, except for a few hours off after lunch, rarely left before 9 p.m., or until the dinner shift was running smoothly, a moment that often never came, for what was happening in the dining room was only part of the larger spectacle. On a slow afternoon she invited me through the swinging kitchen doors and into the labyrinth beyond. The restaurant had two enormous kitchens, one for meals, the second for pastries. The steaks arrived on rolling steel platforms from the butcher's room, where they had been trimmed and sized, and were forked onto long flaming grills by sweating, hassled chefs who addressed the waiters and busboys as "fuckhead" and "Mexico." The waitresses were called "kittycat," or "lovelips," which they hated. But it went with the territory.

Below the kitchen lay supply rooms and prep stations. The hallways were narrow, as on a ship, and pipes ran low overhead, red for fire, yellow for gas. Allison swung open a thick, insulated doorand I was surprised; it was the meat room, where dozens of sides of raw beef hung on hooks under a blue light, dated and stamped with wholesalers' marks.

"Don't want to spend the night in here," I muttered.

"I guess I'm used to it."

The room was cool but not cold, and we stepped inside. The enormous red carcasses- marbled with fat, headless, halved, rib cages sawed through, legs severed above the hoof- seemed aware of us through some essential mammalian affinity. The dead meat, soon to be transubstantiated into money and laughter, would also be revivified, of course, would become warm flesh again, this time human.

The room was controlled for temperature and humidity, Allison explained, so the steaks would dry-age to perfection.

"Who decides when it's time?" I asked, studying the back of her neck, so close that I could easily lean forward and kiss it.

"I do."

The room was small, the ceiling low, and we were alone.

"It's quiet in here," Allison said, turning, keeping my eye.

I nodded. Take her in your arms, I thought, do it now.

"Bill, something happened to you, didn't it?"

I wasn't ready for this, and the strangeness of the room amplified the power of the question. "Something happens to everyone, I think."

"Of course," Allison said softly. "I just wondered."

I took a breath, let it go. "I was a pretty high-powered real estate attorney, in one of the city's best firms. I was married, had a son. Then something happened, yes. Now I'm alone. I'm the guy you see every day."

Allison nodded, as if I'd confirmed something. "You want to tell me-?"

"Do we really know each other?"

"You see me almost every day."

I thought about it. "I don't usually talk about it much, Allison."

"I'm sorry. Shouldn't have asked."

But I had liked the intimacy of the moment. "I remain conversant on other topics," I said with more energy. "Okay?"

Her playfulness returned. "I'll get it out of you, somehow."

"You will?"

"Even if I have to go to extreme measures."

"That doesn't sound so bad."

"It isn't."

I asked her to continue the tour, so she did. Next came the produce walk-ins, filled with chopped vegetables ready for salads and quail eggs stacked by the dozen. All the supplies came in through sidewalk doors. I couldn't tell where we stood in respect to the Havana Room, whether it was above us or beside us, or if its location was what somehow made the room restricted. But I saw nothing unusual, just pipes and ceiling tiles and rough wiring. I was eager to ask Allison about the Havana Room, but suspected I'd learn more if I didn't.

"Then there's upstairs," she said.

"Oh?"

She meant the second floor, which housed three big private party rooms. The largest had a piano and seating for sixty, and was often used for corporate gatherings, wedding dinners, and the like. The second, also large, was furnished with better sofas and favored by married, middle-aged women for social events. The third room, considerably smaller, was rented almost exclusively by Wall Street men at night. This was where the strippers worked. The limit was twenty-five men. The more men, Allison told me, the more problems they had, and sometimes the stripper would run out of the room having been bitten or plundered in some indecorous way. "What does she expect?" Allison asked.

I followed her to the third and fourth floors, which contained furniture storage, an accountant's office, a main office where Allison worked, and employee locker rooms. Along the way I counted three dozen security cameras, and when we paused in the main office, I watched six black-and-white television screens cycle through their respective views of all that I had just toured, as well as views of the main dining rooms, the bar, every cash register, and even the street outside. I realized that Allison could watch people from her office, including me. Was the Havana Room similarly monitored? I studied the cycling screens but didn't spot any room I hadn't seen before.

"Well, that's it!" said Allison, perhaps noticing my interest. "Except for Ha's penthouse, which we can't see."

"Ha?"

"Yes," said Allison. "Ha. You know Ha."

"The handyman."

"Yes. The only man I completely trust." Perched above the bright inferno of the restaurant, Ha lived in a tiny room on the top floor. No one knew exactly where he came from or just how old he was, she said, and no one who depended on him insisted on being informed. He may have jumped off a ship in Seattle, he may have walked over the Mexican border. What was known about Ha was that he could fix anything- broilers, air conditioners, meat slicers, any of the restaurant's twenty-six refrigerators, the freight elevator, the washing machines, fire alarms. "He's quite brave, too," Allison added.

"Brave?"

"Absolutely." At night, she said, Ha navigated the dim catacombs of the restaurant by touch; one evening years back, after the night porter had left, a thief jimmied the sidewalk doors and crept in. Ha, lying on the kitchen floor wiggling a gas line, heard the intruder and surmised his route toward the kitchens. Immediately he darkened the narrow hallways, turned on the lights in the liquor walk-in, and waited. The intruder lurched along the hallways, drawn to the brightness like an insect, and when he scurried into the cave of expensive booze, Ha swung the door shut, secured it with a length of metal pipe, and called the police. Allison adored him, and believed, I think, that he was more spirit than man.

"He's the only one who has my cell number," she joked. "The rest of them can't have it."

"How do your sad supplicants call you, then?"

"They can look me up in the book." We took the stairs down to the dining room. "Actually, there's a new guy these days," she admitted. "Not that it's necessarily going anywhere."

I watched her bounce down the steps in front of me, and felt better for having not declared my affections for her in the meat room. "Go ahead and tell me, just to make me jealous."

"Well, you know I don't eat breakfast at home." Allison sat down at one of the back tables and I joined her. Two busboys were vacuuming at the other end. "I have breakfast at this little place on the corner near my apartment. You'd think I wouldn't want to be in a restaurant, any kind of restaurant, but I like this place- and my apartment is kind of big and drafty, you know, kind of empty, even though I love my kitchen, so I go to this little place, and have an egg and toast, something to get started." Her voice was animated, excited by the story, and she'd already forgotten our intimate moment in the meat room. "So I was minding my own business, just sitting in my booth, reading the newspaper, when this big man sat down next to me with his newspaper, and he was wearing this beautiful suit, very conservative, and I said to myself, Well, okay, I might be having a little bit of a problem."

"I know where this is going," I said, secretly miserable.

"I looked at his hand and saw no wedding ring, although you can't always be sure. But I didn't say anything or look at him, I just kept reading, sort of hoping, and then I watched him order and eat his meal and he had perfect manners." She sighed, remembering. "I see a lot of people eat, I know what perfect table manners are. And then the waitress brought my check because she wanted the table. And I kind of kept sort of looking at him but he didn't see me and I had to go."

"Which you didn't like."

"No, I didn't. And he wasn't there the next day. But the day after that he was, he was sitting behind me, back to back, and I could smell him, and that- I admit it, I was having a little problem. Then he pulls out a phone and he calls someone up and I'm trying to listen as much as I can, you know." Allison smiled guiltily. "I want desperately to hear him, I want to know who he's talking to! It could be some woman, Of course. And I hear him say, 'Two-point-six million, I'm willing to do that.' That was all he said. And then he just listened and nodded and hung up. And I thought, All right, this guy is for real, you know?"

"You smelled the big money."

"I guess. I mean, I can't tell you how many fakers and braggers and jerks are out there, Bill, with their little gold pinkie rings and rented Jaguars. So now I was even more interested, I admit it. A girl has to watch out for herself, right? So I twisted around to see what he was reading. It was the Financial Times of London, which is the sexiest newspaper there is to read. Don't ask me why. Those pink pages. It's so European. So I liked that, too. I was trying to think of something to say and then he looked at his watch and got up and left. Afterward the waitresses talked about him. They liked him, too. So I was thinking, Come on, Allison, you're a smart girl, you're a catch, you know what to do. So the next day I decided I was-"

She stopped, gave me a devilish smile.

"Go on," I said. "I can take it."

"Oh, Bill, you don't want a woman like me."

"How do you know?"

"You just don't. I do terrible things. I even flirt with strange men in meat lockers." She pushed at the spoon in front of her. "I really am very, very bad, you know. Fickle and irresponsible and manipulative."

"I doubt it." And I did.

"Maybe you'll find out sometime."

"Maybe. God help me if I do. Go on with the story. You decided to-?"

"Yes. I got up early, picked out a good dress, and got down there a little early, trying to match his time of arrival. And I did! He looked up when I came in and gave me a smile. That was it. I mean I said hi or something. But I sat down feeling victorious! It's silly, but okay. Then I turned around and asked if I could borrow some of his paper. He said yes and handed it to me. And I said something like it seemed like he was starting to be a regular. Something stupid like that, totally obvious. And he said he'd just been eating there because he had meetings in the neighborhood. But soon would be done. I basically panicked and told him I ran a steakhouse downtown and would love for him to try the place as my guest."

"Very subtle."

"I didn't have a choice! I gave him my card and said please, puhl-ease call me ahead of time and-"

"You didn't say it like that."

"No, but almost. I said I'd see that he got a good table. He looked at the card and said that was great and introduced himself and we shook hands and it was all I could do not to put his thumb in my mouth." Allison smiled. "Isn't that awful?"

"Tell me the rest, even though I know what it is."

"Well, he came into the restaurant two days later- he called first and I practically had a heart attack-"

"Did I see him?"

"You weren't in that night."

"And?"

"Well, once I had him in the restaurant, I had him." She nodded to herself in satisfaction, and I was touched by her need and vulnerability. Then she saw something in my face. "Come on, I'm not your type. You like good women. Virtuous, dependable women."

"You should've met my ex-wife."

"I wish I had."

"You would've liked her."

"Would she have liked me?"

I thought about this. "No."

"Why not?"

Too confident. But I didn't say this aloud. "So, did you see this guy again?"

"Yup," Allison said, "you could say that."

"All the other pretenders are gone, then?"

"Yes." She nodded and recrossed her legs the other way. "Banished."

An hour later I was at Table 17 when I looked up to see the owner, Lipper, in his wheelchair and accompanied by his nurse, an older black woman. He frowned as he passed me and paddled his feet on the floor to stop. "You work for me?"

I shook my head. "Just a loyal customer."

"Ah, good, very good. You like steak?"

"Your hanger steak, especially."

"Good." Lipper edged closer. Hair whirlpooled in his ears, his bottom eyelids sagged forward pinkly. "People still like steak."

"Always will, I think."

He threw a bony finger at me. "I know you. Heard you were a friend of Allison's. Talk with her on my time, too. You're a lawyer, is that it?"

"I suppose."

He showed a lot of old horse teeth at this. "Last I heard, lawyers worked in law offices, but okay. Allison likes to keep her men nearby so she can keep an eye on them, heh! I've seen her over the years… she's got all the moves, let me tell-" He looked around the room, as if hearing someone suddenly call his name. "Yeah, anybody can serve a steak! You burn some cow meat and put it on a plate. Plus the city has a bunch of great steakhouses, right? There's Smith and Wollensky, and Keen's- what a beauty that place is- and Peter Luger's in Brooklyn. These places make a damn fine steak. But we're a little different, a little special. Sinatra owned this place for a while, back in the sixties. You know that? Lot of girls. Revolving pussy, I always called it. Pussy coming, pussy going." I saw in Lipper the happy mouth-energy of the old, in which all thoughts rise to the surface unrestrained by propriety or forethought. "We went out together a few times, me and Frank. Yeah, he saw this place, said he just had to have a place like that. I guess he might have sung here a few times-" Lipper poked at his testicles excitedly, as if trying to balance one on top of the other. "I was a young man. We never advertise this place, see. Don't have to. We got it just right. Allison's very good. Of course her little room is illegal, her little show in there, I mean. She's very careful, never had a problem. She told you about it, right? She explains the whole story, gets them intrigued. I'm too old but I'd do it, too, if I were younger. Just to experience it. I know it's illegal. Who cares? Half the best part of life is illegal! Sue me, I always say. You going to arrest an old man in a wheelchair? Lock me away? You tell men you got a special room down there and it's like honey to the bees, guy- oh, she doesn't want me to talk about it. What was your name, Rogers? I had a doctor named Rogers, fixed my toes. Wait, I got to take a pill- I got this beeper thing that tells me-"

A black female hand appeared over his shoulder, graceful as a falling leaf, the tiny red pill floating on a soft, milk-chocolate palm. He plucked it up and clapped it into his mouth, where a thick tongue came down and swept it inward like the crushing device in the back of a garbage truck. "I can swallow them dry. Okay, where washoney and bees… Sinatra, oh. Allison knows this. She knows more about men, studied them, I mean we got good selections, good cuts, heh. Lots of men. She's had a lot of them, too." He leaned forward, dropped a knuckled paw on my arm and spoke conspiratorially. "Let me give you some advice, son, because I see her paying attention to you. I see what's going on. You got a nice way about you, that's why I'm telling you this. I'm an old man, better listen to me. Don't fall for her. Right? I mean, don't give in, don't make a fool of yourself. She wants you to. She'll play with you, she'll find your weakness. Let her stew, let her get frustrated and emotional- that's when you put in the sword! Right? It's the guys who aren't interested who excite her. I've seen it over and over! The guys that come out and declare themselves, she can't stand them! Plays with them, tortures them! She's got some moves on her most men never heard of!" His eyes brightened wickedly and for a moment I glimpsed the charming younger man he'd once been. "I had a rich guy suicidal for her once! I tell him, you can buy all the pussy you want, what's the big deal? He took my advice, went to the islands for few weeks with a bunch of little blond fluffy-muffies, heh! Allison, she never blinked. What does she care? I guess he got over it. What's your name again? Woodrow? Never mind, I'll forget, anyway… So that's the kind of place I run, simple as that. It's a special. I tell you Sinatra owned this place? Back in the sixties, in fact. Yeah, I bought this place back in the seventies, when you couldn't give it away! That's when I stepped in. Yes, stepped in and stepped up. I don't do any of the work anymore, just come and watch my babies eat and drink and have a good time. We had a lot of the greats in here, let me tell you. Wilt Chamberlain when he was in town, he had them lining up, they'd never seen someone like him before, Sonny and Cher, Joe Frazier- the boxer, Clint Eastwood, Redford, Billy Crystal, politicians, we had everybody, that guy Puffy Brush, whoever, heh. I just watch now. I don't need the money. I was a good businessman in my time. I did my deals, I signed in ink, baby. Not many people like that left these days! Everybody wants the cushion under their asses. Not me. I worked! I'm a fossil. Made of stone, heh. Parts of me still are. Don't look surprised. It still works! Two hundred milligrams of this new stuff they got and watch out. Once a month's all I need. I have a friend. She's very understanding, comes around my apartment. She's a certain age, okay? We like each other. She takes her time. Happy to lie down or just drink jizz." Again the horse teeth, the squinting, amused eyes. "We don't comment too much on human nature here, see. Accept human frailty- that's my philosophy. Shouldn't shock you. You'll be the same, I guarantee. I didn't age gracefully, and that's fine with me. My secret is the omega-three oils. Only the best, made from the littlest fishies! The big ones, tuna and swordfish, too much mercury." He patted my arm urgently. "I know you like Allison, they all do, I can see it in your face, I've seen you in here, fella. You hang on to your mustard, that's my advice. She's smarter than both of us put together. Back in the day I myself could've given her a-"

His old nurse bent close to him and whispered.

"Don't say that to me! You work for me, you-"

Without a word, she rolled Lipper away, and like a child in a stroller he accepted her judgment passively, not bothering to say goodbye, instead eager for his next encounter.

I might have found good reasons to worry in Lipper's monologuehis vague references to the illegality of the Havana Room, to Allison's romantic manipulations- but I didn't, and not just because his words seemed the harmless and even touching ramblings of an old restaurateur edging toward senility. After all, much as I liked Allison, I was not actually involved with her. Having been around awhile, she and I both knew that the other had at least the usual biographical complications. Sure, I was jealous that she'd found a new guy, but I was also just glad to see her each day, satisfied to watch her from a distance as she adjusted her glasses or slipped a bit of hair behind her ear, any of the lovely little things that women do, and if I had been asked if I was getting to know Allison at least passably well, I'd now have answered yes. Moreover, my hours at the steakhouse proved such a pleasant distraction from the rest of my time- in my horrid apartment, feeling guilty about Wilson Doan, missing my son, listening to my similarly doomed neighbors scrape up and down the stairs- that I had no reason to dwell on Lipper's egomaniacal rant.

But that began to change one cold night in late February, long after I'd finished my dinner, when Allison came over to Table 17.

"Going already?" she asked, standing before me, heels together, her voice a little nervy.

"In a minute, maybe."

She looked at her watch. The time was nearly eleven. "Any chance you could stay a while?"

"Stay?"

She smiled. "I'll ply you with coffee or drinks or desserts and anything else we serve."

I told her I was full. "What do you need?"

Allison took a breath. "Remember I told you I met that guy?"

"Sure. You wanted to put his thumb in your mouth."

"Anyway, his name is Jay Rainey, and he called me a few minutes ago, and he needs a lawyer."

"The phone book is full of lawyers, Allison."

She shook her head. "No, no, Bill, he needs one tonight."

"Tonight?"

"He needs one now."

"Why? Did he get arrested?"

She sat down at my table, which was unusual, considering the restaurant was full. "It's something to do with- well, Jay's been trying to buy this building downtown and the seller is sort of this jerk, I guess, who's been really hard to deal with, and anyway, now the seller says they have to have a finished sale by midnight tonight or the deal's off."

I shook my head. "That's a bluff."

"That's what I thought, too, but Jay says the seller is telling the truth. It's a tax situation or something and-"

"Doesn't Jay have a lawyer?"

"That's the thing. Jay was planning to use his regular lawyer when the papers were ready, but not until then and then this evening the seller just presents him with the contract."

"What's the selling amount?"

Her eyes widened. "It's three million dollars, I think."

Not much. A tiny amount by Manhattan standards. "They've got some kind of deal worked out already?"

"I guess."

"Jay shouldn't sign it, not under this kind of pressure."

"I thought that, too," Allison said, nobody's fool.

"But he wants the building badly, right?"

"Guess so. Also I think the seller is insisting Jay have a lawyer look over the contract."

I tasted my coffee, feeling strangely miserable. "The lawyer's giving Jay no time to have the contract looked over and yet is insisting it be looked over?"

"I know, it's crazy. But will you do it?"

"I can't."

"Why?"

"Lot of reasons. He needs a title search and a survey. Usually there's a tax adjustment to be made. Some of these larger co-op buildings have very complicated tax situations, too. Abatements, escrowed reserve funds, all kinds of stuff. I haven't talked with the seller's lawyer, I haven't seen a title report, I don't have time to do any of the calculations, I don't have a legal secretary to file documents- c'mon, it's crazy."

"Would you at least look at the documents?"

"I can look at them, but that doesn't mean anything, Allison."

She started to stand up. "But you'll look?"

"I repeat. This is crazy."

"I'll set you up in the Havana Room."

I wasn't expecting this. "The room you didn't tell me about?"

"Yes."

"It's going to be open tonight?"

"Ha says he's ready."

"For what?"

She shook her head. She wasn't telling me. Not yet, anyway.

"You better watch out, I might like it in there."

"Yes, you might," Allison said. "Most do."

A few minutes later I followed Allison through the door with the brass plate and yellowed card down a curved marble stairwell- nineteen steps by my count- and was not disappointed when I reached the bottom and entered a long, dark space lit by yellowy sconces. Groups of men sat quietly at the mahogany bar and in booths. The decor hadn't changed much in a hundred years or so. They'd left the old hat racks, the brass spittoon filled with lost umbrellas, the chipped black-and-white tile floor. Allison set me up at one of the end booths, most private of all, and told the waiter to bring whatever I liked.

"Back in a bit," she said.

Now I eagerly inspected the space. True to the room's name, the far wall was shelved with hundreds of small boxes of quality cigarsCohiba, Montecristo, Bolivar- and under the pressed-tin ceiling each booth was graced with a painting of prerevolutionary Cuba, below which stood a small lamp, in case an item needed close inspection. A supply of pens, pads of paper, and ashtrays, each embossed with the steakhouse's gold script, was provided as well. The napkins, however, were imprinted HAVANA ROOM in small blue letters. The booths were less comfortable than the bar yet superior, for there were only eight of them, each so high-backed that you couldn't overhear adjacent conversation. Well, that's not quite true. I did catch a few lines of dialogue next to me that involved $200 million worth of new Malaysian bonds and how, tonight, guys, right here, right now, their credit rating was going to be improved. And I spotted two large fiftyish men in beautiful suits who sat examining the X ray of someone's knee with great interest. One of the men wore a huge championship ring on his hand.

Meanwhile, shuffling through the smoky gloom, came the waiter, ancient and aloof, who passed my order to the barman, himself a tired, unimpeachable fellow who worked without comment or, it seemed, awareness of the enormous, black-eyed nude stretched out behind him. You could not help but stare at the painting; imprisoned within her heavy gilt frame, the naked woman appeared both demure and illicit in her expression, beckoning in brush-stroked stillness across time and fleshly impossibility to all comers- a one-hundred-and-fifty-year selection of souls that now included me. I know what you want, her eyes said, and I felt embarrassed to be staring at her, so I stood and examined the dusty bookshelf that ran along the wall opposite the bar; on it sat a complete copy of the 1966 New York State Legal Code, a small volume of Irish poetry, a birds of North America reference work, a heavily marked environmental impact study commissioned prior to the creation of a coastal resort village in Florida, several of Teddy Roosevelt's naval histories, a King James Bible, tidal charts for New York Harbor for the years 1936-41, an owner's manual for a 1967 Corvette, and a series of pornographic novels set in 1970s Hong Kong involving a British banker. These random, brittle-paged leavings confirmed the impression that the room was so crowded with the shards and shadows of lost lives that one was rendered anonymous there; but for an occasional mop over the cigar butts and dead flies, it appeared no one cared what went on, so long as you paid your bill and remained civil. The men's room at the back was a surprisingly ill-kept green coffin, bordering on foul.

Yet all this obvious inattention seemed to appeal to the clientele, for the world has too many clean well-lit places to do business, including the conference room, the golf course, and the hotel suite. Each has its advantages. But there are certain deals that are harmed by sunlight, a printed agenda, and juice and muffins on the buffet. Like insect colonies and creeping plants, these intrigues need a bit of moisture and darkness to thrive. The men in the Havana Room, I noticed, generally only made eye contact with the others in their own party, and didn't display the occupational gregariousness of salesmen and deal makers. Instead they hunched and glared, rotating their heads toward passersby with furtive irritation. I didn't see a phone or laptop in use, and if these items were not expressly prohibited, then I supposed that they were looked upon with disdain. The room's ascendant technologies, I guessed, were the bluff, the grimace, and the long silence. In a man's shrug, millions might appear, or a lifetime's labor turn to ash.

Allison came back into the room a few minutes after eleven, followed by an outsized man with a large head of dark hair and wide shoulders. He turned his head as he walked, swinging his gaze around like a sledgehammer, taking in the whole room.

"Bill?" Allison said. "This is Jay Rainey."

He offered me one of his ample hands, and I found myself looking into a genial, unknowably handsome face.

Allison turned to me, eyes a little crazy, I thought, and said, "Bill's ready to look everything over."

"Great, great," said Jay. "The seller's attorney and the title guy will be here at eleven-thirty."

"I'll see what I can do. I'm not promising anything."

He nodded, somewhat casually, considering I was the one helping him, then excused himself to the bar. He was, I saw, at that point when a young man starts to become an older man. Perhaps a vigorous thirty-five, with a deep chest, not in the exaggerated way of bodybuilders, but as a natural example of superior proportion. Later I learned he forced himself to do three hundred push-ups each morning, less for fitness than as a daily test of will. As a bulwark against despair. He looked heavy- not fat but heavy, made of denser, more difficult stuff. You couldn't imagine knocking him over very easily. His strength came up from the ground in him, the kind of slow-mule power that is good for lifting and climbing and other activities- as Allison no doubt already knew.

"Tell me about yourself, Jay," I said when he returned.

"I'm basically a- well, I buy a little, sell a little." He smiled. "Nothing very big, just things as they come along. This is a good building. It's got a couple of tenants- small companies paying decent rents, it's got good systems and I think I can add a floor on the roof, add some kind of penthouse apartment."

A man can talk himself into anything, of course. "Three million, Allison said."

"Yes."

"You have a regular lawyer?"

Jay nodded. "I do, I do, but he's traveling and the seller insists on closing the deal tonight. Threatened to pull his offer."

"Has your lawyer seen the contract?"

"No."

"Couldn't the seller fax the contract to him?"

He nodded at the reasonableness of the question. "I asked his office if I could do that but my guy is in Asia, asleep, and by the time he wakes up, it'll be too late."

I hummed a small agreeable noise as if this explanation made perfect sense, although it didn't, for few lawyers involved in deals in Asia also handle small-time Manhattan real estate transfers- where three million dollars is, as I said, minuscule, and unless somebody had changed the time zones, it was now late morning in the Far East.

"What about the title search?" I asked. "You can't buy property without clear title."

"I ordered it myself. As I said, the title man should be here tonight."

"How about a survey?" I asked, meaning the official drawing of the property's lot lines and location.

"Got it."

"You had the building inspected?"

"Sure."

"You got a written report?"

He opened his briefcase and took out an engineer's report. I flipped through it. According to the write-up the building was lucky to be standing, and would be rubble the next time someone slammed a door. But that's the way they're always written on old buildings.

"So we need a contract, a title, some tax and transfer forms, and some money. Which brings up the question of how you're doing this. Is there a bank involved?"

"No."

"All cash?"

"No, it's a little creative, actually."

I waited, saying nothing.

"Four hundred thousand and a property swap," he said.

"Who is paying the four hundred?"

"They are."

Three million dollars minus four hundred thousand equaled Allison's thumb-suckable two-point-six million dollars.

"What's the other property?"

"Acreage on Long Island, way out, ninety miles out there on the North Fork, looking over Long Island Sound. Beautiful property. They're putting in vineyards and golf courses out there, you know."

I nodded. "I better look at the contract."

"Allison said you'd worry about the small stuff."

"Sure."

"You come in every day?" asked Jay.

"Just about."

"I guess you're retired?"

"I guess I am. Okay, so, Jay, I feel it's in your best interest if you know the following things." I looked straight into his eyes. "First, walking into a steakhouse at night is not a good way to find a lawyer. For all you know, I might not even be a lawyer. I am, but the point is I might not be. Second, you don't know anything about me. I haven't practiced law in a while, Jay. I've had a setback or two, okay? Also, I haven't maintained relations with any title company people, I don't know anyone in the city departments anymore, okay? I haven't been watching the little language changes, I don't know how the tax forms might've changed. I'm out of practice, is what I'm saying. What I'm telling you, Jay, is that I'm not competent to be your attorney for this transaction. If it were a little ranch house out on Long Island, I'm sure I could handle it. But this deal involves two big, valuable properties and a-"

"How much do you want?" Jay asked. He was stirring, moving his shoulders around.

"I'm not trying to drive the fee up, Jay." I stared at him. "I'm trying to be honest here."

His brow fell angrily. "Oh, bullshit."

"Excuse me?"

"I said this is bullshit."

"What do you mean?"

He lifted his hands, palms up. "Allison told me you managed some big real estate transactions, the sale of that bank building up on Forty-eighth Street. What was that, like three hundred million? With all sorts of complicated syndication of ownership?"

This was true, but I hadn't told Allison the first word about the deal, though it was easy enough to look it up on the Internet.

"Right?"

Allison had checked me out, I realized. "Well-"

"Well what? C'mon, I'm in a fucking jam here, Bill. And you're telling me you're not qualified?" He leaned forward. "Look, really, if it's about the money, I can pay you a good fee." He pulled a checkbook out of his suit pocket. "I'm putting money down, right here, for your services and you don't want it?"

I put my hands up to slow him down. "Let me ask you a couple of questions."

He sat back. "Shoot."

"Who owns the building you're buying?"

"Some Chilean wine company."

"Why did the deal drag out so long?"

"I don't know. They didn't offer enough at first."

"They're buying up empty acreage out on Long Island?"

"Sure, why not? It's beautiful oceanfront property." Jay grinned expansively. "God's not making any more of it. They're going to put it into vines."

"Plant grapes, you mean."

"Right."

"How did you arrive at the price?"

"I had a price in mind for the land. They found me, see. We dicked around, got the deal worked out."

"You didn't just want all the cash out from the property?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Aah, well. I thought this was better."

He thought I shouldn't know, in other words. "You could have taken all cash and you didn't? That's weird."

He bit his drink straw and said, "I wanted the building. It's in good shape. I'm walking away with four hundred thousand in cash, so life can't be too bad."

"Who negotiated for you?"

"I did."

"Ever do a deal this big?"

He stared at me. More straw action.

"Sounds to me like they're getting a nice break on the land value," I noted.

"Yeah," Jay said miserably. "In a hot market it's got to be worth four million, but it's going here for three."

"Why the low figure?"

He drew a deep slow breath.

"You really didn't have anybody negotiate this for you?"

"Like I said, no."

I looked into his big handsome face. "Sounds like they're eating your liver."

Colin Harrison

The Havana Room

"It's enough money," he sighed. "It's okay."

"You have a copy of the proposed contract I can look at?"

"No, actually. The seller's bringing it."

"So you do need a lawyer."

"I guess." He dipped his head forward. "I know this is unusual, Bill. You can just charge me extra, whatever seems right."

I wasn't really interested in a fee yet. But before I could tell him how risky it was to sign a contract he'd never seen, Allison walked into the Havana Room with two men in suits.

"Hi guys." She introduced the older man as Gerzon, the seller's attorney. He carried two briefcases, and was decorous and smooth as he shook my hand and introduced the second fellow as Barrett, from the title company. Title men in New York City don't do much except flip through city records, some of them going back three hundred years, to be sure there are no claims, liens, or encumbrances on the title, and that the chain of ownership is clear and unbroken. Most of the time it's straightforward, and the title man just collects his fee for the service and for title insurance.

Gerzon turned to Jay. "Where's your lawyer?"

He waved at me. "This is him."

Gerzon smiled at my wrinkled shirt, my subprofessional appearance. "Pardon me." He was one of those men who are detailed in their instructions to their tailors. But the suit was just the foundation of his vanity. His watch was unapologetically vulgar. The ring and the cuff links matched, and the shirt collar was heavily starched, the silk knot of his tie a confection of soft edges. His toupee was also very good- though they are never good enough.

Yet the inspection was mutual. "Where'd you work?" he asked.

"Private practice."

A cool nod. "I haven't heard of you."

"Big city. Many lawyers."

"I see."

I didn't want him to think he had an advantage. "So," I asked as we all sat down, "why are you selling your client's building in the back room of a steakhouse and not in a law office?"

"It's a time problem." He shrugged. "We're out of it." He looked at Jay. "I was told there would be a lawyer to assist Mr. Rainey. So we came here. We're being accommodating."

I looked at my watch. Twenty-five after eleven. "If you have to get this building sold by midnight, I'd say that Mr. Rainey is the one who's being accommodating."

Gerzon turned to Jay. "Should we discuss who is accommodating whom? I told you, midnight or no deal."

The title man, Barrett, professionally alert to lawyerly tones, interrupted. "Hey listen, if there's not going be a deal, then tell me now, because I could be-"

"It's all right," Jay said. "We're okay. Let's just be cool here." He looked at me, raised his eyebrows to tell me to relax. "There's a lot of expertise at the table. We'll hammer any problem out and get it done."

Gerzon produced copies of the contract and unfolded an oversized pair of tortoiseshell glasses. He seemed to be the kind of man who was acquainted with people everywhere, pointedly remembering the details of their lives, but who himself was genuinely known by almost no one, except perhaps by a former wife or the people who had sued him with righteousness. "What is it?" he asked, uneasy with my attention.

"Is real estate your primary practice?"

"Oh, no, no," said Gerzon. "I'm involved in a variety of endeavors." He smiled in such a way that I was to infer that the transaction at hand was a trifle, that larger matters awaited his attention, nine-digit wire transfers from foreign banks, dozens of important phone calls, imminent IPOs- a cyclone of gold and greatness.

Barrett handed around copies of the title report on the oceanfront land. Gerzon turned his attention to it, but I have seen hundreds of lawyers read thousands of documents and if they are reading, actually reading, even under pressurized circumstances, a stillness comes over them, the energies of their personality dropping onto the document at hand. Gerzon wasn't reading. His blink rate wasn't right. He was faking it, and this meant, I suspected, that he felt very good indeed about the deal.

"You have a card?" I said.

He looked up. "Yes, of course." He slipped one from out of a gold case and handed it to me. "You?"

"I don't have any new ones currently printed," I replied.

"Ah," he said, pointedly asking no more.

I fingered his card. It had two addresses, both telling. The first was on lower Fifth Avenue, where the old buildings are chopped up into small offices on the top floors, full of marginal businesses. Someone from out of town might think it was a prestigious address, but those in the city would know better. The second address specified one of Long Island's uncountable small office complexes. I've been to these places. The offices aren't particularly plush, all rent-a-painting decor and wall-to-wall carpeting. The secretaries are young, mean, and well compensated. The lawyers, usually local boys, some of whom have done stints in the city, prefer to handle cases that involve real estate transactions or estate work- generally simple procedures that guarantee a prompt fee. Eviction, tenant-complaint, pro bono work, constitutional defenses of immigrants and minorities, slip-and-fall work, etc., are strictly avoided. In this world the real estate men know the lawyers and the lawyers know the title people, who know the bankers, who are all known by the big-time contractors, who themselves maintain clear, constant, and affectionate relations with the politically appointed members of the county water authority as well as the elected members of the town board, who approve zoning changes and code exemptions. In sum, the second address on Gerzon's card conjured a long-settled, wealthy suburban civilization whose foremost institutions had achieved world-class standing in only certain areas of human endeavor: the luxury-car tune-up, the nerve-sparing removal of the prostate gland; the emergency resodding of a lawn. He probably lived there.

"So, gentlemen," I began, my voice slipping into tones I hadn't used in several years, "we have a deal value of three million dollars. It's a property swap, with four hundred thousand dollars going to Mr. Rainey. Because of the cash outlay, we'll call Mr. Gerzon the buyer and we'll call Mr. Rainey the seller."

"Fine," said Gerzon.

"Who is paying the recording fees, the transfer taxes, the Suffolk County surcharges, the title search, any back taxes owed on either property, and whatever else I haven't been told about?"

"We are," said Gerzon.

I leaned over to Jay. "You negotiated this?"

"It came out of the price, man."

"So there's nothing left to negotiate?"

Both men shook their heads.

I turned to Jay. "You don't need me."

"Yes he does," said Gerzon. "He needs to have legal representation so he can't come back and say the contract was no good, that he didn't understand it."

"And he finds some joker in the back of a steakhouse who happens to have a law degree and that's all right with you?" But then I thought of something. I pointed at the copies of the contract. "Jay, you realize you haven't yet signed these?"

"Not yet," Jay said. He was, I saw, one of those big men who need to keep moving, unable to rest upon the details of such things as contracts, which require stillness and attention. Apparently he knew this about himself, for something in his hopeful glance suggested he was delivering himself into my hands.

"You realize you can still negotiate the price, I mean."

"No he fucking can't!" said Gerzon.

"Of course he can. Nothing's signed here. There is no price. He can walk out of here, go to the movies."

Gerzon looked at Rainey. "I said get a lawyer, not a junkyard dog."

"It's okay-" Jay began.

"We're covering all the fees, we're being totally accommodating," said Gerzon.

I didn't like him and I didn't like the situation but I pulled the chain on the small lamp on the table and slid the contract beneath it, trying to get a better sense of the deal. Jay was acquiring a six-story loft building in lower Manhattan at 162 Reade Street, not far from City Hall, where the streets run according to the obsolete logic of cow paths and farmers' lanes. When the World Trade Center went down, real estate values in the area got strange. Some people panicked over more terrorism or contamination by the chemical soup that wafted from the burning site and sold for nothing, while others stood firm. If I'd had even a day's notice, I'd have checked the city records downtown to see how long Gerzon's client had owned the property, what the cost-basis was. The building was being exchanged by one Voodoo LLC, a limited-liability company, for ownership of eighty-six acres of real estate on the North Fork of Long Island. Survey documents of the land parcel were attached to the proposed contract and showed a deep strip of land running almost half a mile along Long Island Sound.

I looked up at Gerzon. "You're dumping a marginal downtown property with unprofitable long-term leases and possibly contaminated by the World Trade Center disaster for a huge piece of oceanfront acreage," I told him. "My client is short on cash to cover his closing costs and you've squeezed him way down on the price as a result. You're coughing up four hundred thousand dollars, which is nothing, nothing at all!" I turned to Jay. "You understand that once you sign this contract-"

"Let's do the deal, Mr. Wyeth," growled Gerzon. "Let's do the damn deal and go home."

The waiter drifted past, nearly mistakable as a configuration of cigar smoke. Allison signaled him. "Guys," she announced nervously, "anyone want a late dinner, drink, dessert before we begin?"

Barrett laid his pink hands on the table and ordered the largest steak the place sold.

"Mr. Gerzon?"

"Nothing for me."

"Bill?"

"I'll have some of that chocolate cake."

Allison nodded at the waiter to induce action and then glanced at me, her face tense behind her smile. Something about Jay unnerved her, I thought, even though his big hand had already smoothed its way up the small of her back.

"Get me one of those cigars," he said to her, and when she did he inspected it for a moment, ran it under his nose, nodded his satisfaction, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his suit.

"Okay," I told everyone. "I'm going to insist I have a chance to look at the contract privately. Just get me a quiet room where I can read this for"- I checked my watch-"the next twenty-nine minutes."

"Great," said Jay. "Then we-"

"Twenty-four minutes," coughed out Barrett. "I need five minutes for myself, start to end, no more, but no less."

"Twenty-four, then."

Gerzon pulled more papers from his briefcase. "We also have the transfer and tax forms, all the Suffolk County forms, too. That takes five minutes, too."

Jay was nervous. "Can we really do this in nineteen minutes? I could just-"

"No," I said. "Don't sign anything while I'm gone."

Allison led me back up the stairs, through the dining room and kitchen, then down a hallway lined with sacks of onions and potatoes. "That's the only way out of the Havana Room?" I asked.

"Yes," she called over her shoulder. "Now, the night-shift bookkeeper is in my office so I can't put you there, the adding machine drives everyone nuts." I watched the curve of muscle in each of her calves as we climbed a back stairway. What had Lipper said? She's got some moves on her most men never heard of. We passed waiters and a tray of canapes and three flights up she opened a small windowless door. "This is the quietest spot we have."

It was the restaurant's laundry room, which I hadn't seen on my earlier tour. Inside, a woman bent over an ancient Singer sewing machine, tapping rhythmically at the electric foot pedal as she fed torn fabric under its jabbing needle, while behind her, in three industrial-size washing machines, cotton tablecloths and napkins and chef's aprons tumbled in a bleachy storm.

"Mrs. Cordelli, we need the room for a little while," Allison said. The woman stood and left. Allison cleared off a small wooden table. "I'm going to knock on the door in fifteen minutes."

I set myself to the pages and soon, my attention sharpened by the room's strong smell of bleach, I had the sense of the contract. It was a perfectly legal funhouse of riders, amendments, powers of attorney, and escrow arrangements. It had passages of vagueness and extreme paranoia. To the best of my understanding, Jay Rainey had made various representations, "subject to the buyer's inspection," the deadline for which had passed, that the land being exchanged was indeed subdividable, free of buried gasoline tanks, had received Department of Health approval for multiple large-scale septic systems, had well water that contained acceptably low levels of perchlorate, a residue from chemical fertilizers used for years by Long Island's potato farmers, did not overlap with any Native American burial grounds, was not the nesting area of the spotted salamander, or any other endangered, threatened, or rare species, and carried various covenants and restrictions pertaining to federally protected marshland, drainage easements, minimum building setbacks, clustered housing arrangements, and so on. The bigger the piece of land, generally, the more complicated its transfer. The buyer, Voodoo LLC, for its part, as represented by Gerzon, had checked off on all of these conditions, not changing any of them. Which was strange- usually in a large real estate transaction there's a last-minute struggle over a number of residual issues as the two parties try to gain some final advantage before everything is signed.

It appeared, moreover, that Voodoo LLC, so eager to dump the Reade Street property, did not particularly care to inspect the nature of the ownership of the Long Island property. I saw no disclosure form regarding debts, liens, or judgments. Plus, in receiving the Reade Street property, Jay was requiring no improvements, consideration of certain conditions, or contingencies for conditions hereinafter discovered. And Gerzon had slipped in some slick language that prohibited Jay from seeking "any claim or reversal of indemnity" of Voodoo should problems arise.

That no bank was directly involved, financing the actual transaction, was unusual, too. Companies usually like to leverage real estate transactions, conserving precious cash where possible. Then again, the transaction was a swap, which might have positive tax consequences… clearly, I needed more time. In the old days, a contract like the one in front of me would have required several days of analysis. That no mortgage was being paid off or created might be a bad thing, too. Banks, for all of their excesses, act as a corrective to some of the most foolish or illegal practices, for they usually employ independent inspectors to examine the property proposed for mortgage. Not the case here. As contracts went, this was a one-night stand, and I bet that the reason Jay didn't have a lawyer was that no decent lawyer would be party to such a transaction without insisting that the contract be rewritten from top to bottom. Probably both parties were legally vulnerable. One of them was making a killing and I didn't know which.

The door eased open and there was Allison.

"All set?" she asked brightly.

"I can't be party to this."

"Why?"

"It's a mess."

"Please, Bill."

"I'm trying to protect him, Allison."

"He knows the risks, I think."

"I doubt that."

"It means a lot to him, Bill."

"That's great, Allison. I just met the guy."

"It means a lot to me."

I flipped over the contract. "Someone's getting screwed here, and I'm going to tell him that, Allison."

Less than a minute later we had returned to the Havana Room.

Jay checked his watch. "It's tight."

An enormous steaming steak was waiting at my place, which I had not ordered, as well as the cake, which I had, and Barrett already had butter on his tie. Jay, I could see, had tossed back a drink or two while I'd been gone.

"Okay?" he asked. "Do we have liftoff?"

"I think we should talk a moment, Jay."

Gerzon pointed to his oversized watch. "Damn it, I've got eleven fifty-three. I'm not turning my watch back, either."

I leaned into Jay's ear. "I'm assuming that you'll sign this thing no matter how rotten it is, no matter my advice to the contrary."

His eyes met mine, and he nodded subtly.

"You're close to desperate."

Again a silent yes.

"You realize," I went on, "that Gerzon is bluffing, either on the deadline or the price, and probably has authority to negotiate one of them."

Jay shook his head no.

"I'm going to show you, okay?" I looked Gerzon in the eye and guessed price. "My client is not going to sign this document until you come up with another three hundred thousand dollars."

Gerzon's face creased backward, like he had suddenly stepped into a wind-tunnel. "What?"

"Yes, we'll scratch out the four hundred thousand dollars and write in seven hundred thousand dollars. Initial every figure. No big deal."

"You're fucking crazy!"

"It's done all the time. Just ask Donald Trump."

"You ask him."

"I don't need to, I've seen him do it."

"You're out of your-"

"Barrett, you ever see initialed sums?" I interrupted, feeling good now.

"Yeah, sure."

Jay turned to me. "Bill, the thing is-"

I put my hand on his arm. "Say nothing, pal. Let your lawyer handle it."

Allison watched this exchange, eyes large.

"What's it going to be, Gerzon?"

He already had his cell phone out. He stood up, his face a bitter knot, and stalked out of the room.

"I'm going to lose the deal!" Jay complained, furious now. "I can't believe it!"

"Well, maybe-" Allison began.

Jay confronted me in disbelief. "Bill, I'm going to fucking lose the deal!"

"I don't think so."

We sat a moment, the title man shoveling cake into his mouth.

"He's coming back!"

Gerzon returned, closing his cell phone. "One-fifty," he announced, sitting down again. "That's all I can do."

I'd guessed correctly. "Three hundred."

" Two."

"Two seventy-five," I said. "We won't require a bank check."

"Two twenty — five."

"Two-seventy."

"Come on!"

"Two-seventy," I repeated.

"Two-fucking- fifty."

I didn't answer.

"I said two-fifty."

I turned to Jay. "Did you know that in the second half of the twentieth century prime waterfront property on Long Island returned close to a six thousand percent profit?"

"No."

"You could sit on this property another five years and double your money easily."

"Well-"

"I said two-fifty!" screamed Gerzon.

I leaned toward him and spoke softly. "Two-seventy."

"Two fifty-five, final."

I watched the second hand on my watch tick away ten seconds. "Two-seventy."

"Two-sixty, final."

"Two sixty-five, final," I replied.

"Two sixty-five. Done."

"All right," I said. "Shake my hand."

"You fuck," said Gerzon.

"I know you hate me. Shake it anyway."

He did. I turned to Jay. "You're getting an additional two hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars cash for this property."

He nodded, stunned.

"Wow," breathed Allison. "That was kind of-" She just stared at me. Sexy, I think she might have said, but didn't.

"You'll take cash, I assume," said Gerzon, lifting his second briefcase to the table.

" Cash — cash? Bills?" asked Jay.

"Yes."

"I guess so. Why?"

"This was my instruction." Gerzon was keeping his briefcase open, hiding its total contents. I probably could have asked for more. He counted stacks of bank-banded bills. Ten thousand a stack. "You'll sign a receipt for it."

"Laundering anything, Gerzon?" I said.

"Screw you," he muttered, peeling off the last five thousand. "This is clean. It's real."

Jay turned to Allison. "Do you have a bag or something?"

"Sure. I guess." She retreated behind the bar.

"That's it," said Gerzon. "You can count it."

"I will," I said, and I did, stack by stack. It was correct. Allison returned with a cardboard box that originally held seltzer water. I stacked the cash in it.

"I can sign now?" asked Jay.

I amended the contracts. "Yes."

Then the paperwork began. We had four minutes. "I've got the bank check for the four hundred-" narrated Gerzon, moving the forms around quickly. "Mr. Barrett has his check, thank you… I can sign this… the title report, your copy… you sign here, the receipt for the blood your lawyer took out of my client's arm… And here's the deed, yes, the state transfer form…"

In a minute or so we had completed all the documents. Gerzon neatened his stack of papers, withdrew a date stamp from his briefcase, checked the day, adjusted the hour and minute, and stamped each sheet, bang, bang, bang. "And… that's it, done."

Jay coughed lightly, the box of cash by his side. "Eleven fifty-nine… and midnight, gentlemen."

"Bye guys." Barrett stood to leave. "The deed will be recorded tomorrow downtown."

Gerzon pulled a chain of keys from his pocket and dropped it on the table. "All yours," he said to Jay, not looking at me.

Jay picked up the keys with an odd caution. But then he pulled a single key from his own pocket and gave it to Gerzon. "This is for the lock on the chain at the end of the dirt road."

And that was it- the moment, the consummation. Did each man think he had swindled the other? Gerzon shook hands with Jay and, surprisingly, again with me as well, his grip a painful warning. And then his eyes slid away from each of us, and he left.

Allison made her way back over the tiled floor with a bottle and three glasses. She gave Jay a kiss and searched his eyes for gladness. "It's exciting!" she cried, and I understood that she was only passingly referring to the property deal and the miraculous appearance of a box of money. Jay smiled at her, but when they embraced, her head and breasts lost within his large chest and arms, his eyes looked away, as if through the very walls of the building, and with no discernible excitement or satisfaction, more like sadness, the resolution of someone burdened with a long and complicated journey toward a destination known only to him. I was not supposed to see this on Jay's face, but I did.

"Let's all go out and celebrate." Jay's mood seemed to lift. "I know a little place. I've got to find a way to thank you, Bill."

He was being kind and I waved them off.

"We'll work out some payment tomorrow, okay?"

"Sure," I said. "You two go on. It's all terrific. I enjoyed myself a great deal. Hang on to that box. Congratulations, Jay. You and the rest of the crooks own a piece of the island of Manhattan."

"You want to see it?" he said, his voice energetic now. "I'll be down there tomorrow morning." Then he caught up his coat and nodded to the waiter with a flashing smile and looked down into Allison's face. Her head hung back, neck exposed, eyes dreaming. She was ready for him and didn't mind if anyone knew it. They were desperate, I would see, in their own ways, but desperate people have a way of matching frequencies and finding each other before the end comes. For now something magical had happened, and the Havana Room seemed to whirlpool in a density of money and smoke and lamplight. I watched them go, Allison leaning heavily against Jay, the box under his arm, cigar in his pocket. Despite myself, my affection for Allison, I liked him. Sometimes you just like people right away. This, on the face of it, was another reason that things went further. It was the explanation I'd have offered myself or anyone else. But the truth is more complicated; somehow I sensed a steep angle to Jay's trajectory, if not its direction up or down, then an absolute velocity toward an outcome I wanted to witness. This is the same loaded attraction that creates politicians and football coaches and movie directors. Their believers believe. You don't just like the person, you want to find out something about him, something terribly important and true- you want to see if he wins or loses, lives or dies.